


What We Owe to Each Other

by sweetheartreid



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Derek never met Savannah, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Pining, Slow Burn, i will add to tags as the story progresses <3
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:09:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25757881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetheartreid/pseuds/sweetheartreid
Summary: Derek Morgan keeps a graveyard in his mind where he buries every suppressed desire and unspoken thought.OrAfter a 6 months long break Derek Morgan returns to the BAU and realises he has to confront his feelings for Spencer. He feels like he’s missed his chance.
Relationships: Derek Morgan/Spencer Reid, Luke Alvez/Spencer Reid
Comments: 8
Kudos: 73





	What We Owe to Each Other

Derek would try and explain away the headache he was having by the shock, related to being back in Quantico, after a 6 months break. Of course if he was analysing somebody else, be it an unsub, he could quickly conclude a different reason. It was the constant and unrelenting gritting of his teeth and tension in his jaw that caused the pounding in his head. Blaming things on being tired however, was way easier than confronting the truth that he’s spent years burrowing deep in the back of his mind.

He oftentimes recalls Reid quoting a French doctor René Leriche, as he so diligently pronounced. Leriche once said “Every surgeon carries within himself a small cemetery, where from time to time he goes to pray—a place of bitterness and regret, where he must look for an explanation for his failures”. Spencer said this quote always resonated with him in their line of work.

Derek remembers this being a talking point at the beginning of their friendship. He had felt a profound sadness at the fact that someone, as young and bright eyed as Spencer, coped like this with the horrors of their job. Derek also remembers the desire he felt to wrap Spencer up in his arms and hide him from the world, like a pearl being kept in an oyster, to be protected from the rough waters of the ocean and the relentless beasts that inhabited it. He believes this desire never went away.

However—much like Reid did with failed cases and solutions that were just a minute too late—he had picked up a shovel and dug a grave so vast and great, as to fit this and all his other desires within it. Every day he felt the ache in his spine from overworking himself as he kept having to dig deeper to encompass it all. He spent ages reworking the ground and planting new grass over it to mask that this grave ever existed. There is a portion of his brain now solely dedicated to forgetting the feeling of the shovel in his hands.

Now, looking out into the bullpen, he feels as if the hole he had dug was calling him, his feet threatening to fall in.

Spencer was talking animatedly, his hand movements blurring together in a frenzy. Derek tried to focus on what he was saying, but he found himself unable as something else invaded his mind.  
The “something” was someone, SSA Luke Alvez. The new recruit of the BAU, former US Army ranger and later an FBI agent that worked with the Fugitive Task Force.

None of this information did Derek find out first hand. It was related to him months ago by none other than Spencer during a late night stay at his house. In retrospect the twinge he felt back then at the admiration Spencer showed for “Derek’s replacement” was not his fear of missing out but something else, much darker and deeper. He couldn’t have dwelled on that feeling for too long in that particular instance, as Spencer’s thigh was pressed all along the length of his own and his hair looked just the right type of disheveled as he lent back on Derek’s couch. Derek wishes he could’ve examined his feelings more deeply, analysed their origin and addressed them outright.

It’s another regret he makes a mental note of, to dig a grave for later, as he puts down the pencil he was toying with, worrying it’d snap and alert anyone else of his predicament.

This was the first case that Derek worked on after his 6 months long leave. It was a local case. Derek almost couldn’t hide his disappointment when Penelope informed them they would be working with Washington PD on the case. He was looking forward to getting on the jet with the team. The further in the sky Derek got the lesser his troubles seemed, the weight of the world no longer resting on his shoulders.

It might have had something to do with how often Spencer would keep him company. He could spend hours recapping what he learnt from a documentary about Norman feudalism or the cattle industry of the 1860s. More often than not Spencer would realise he was rambling, panic washing over his face in waves, as he apologised.

He realised that Spencer’s reactions were trained, years of neglect and dismissal suffered by peers and mentors alike taught him no one was willing to listen to him.

But Derek was.

Derek wished to soothe him so badly in those moments. He wanted to pet his hair and press his head against his chest and tell him to talk as long as he had air in his lungs. Instead he settled for grasping his knee and saying

„I don’t mind pretty boy, keep going”.

The sheepish smile Spencer would give him and the blush dusting on his cheeks would sometimes feel like a fair trade to feeling his head rest on Derek’s beating heart.

Right now though his mind was brought back down to earth as his eyes focused on movement in the bullpen. Spencer’s slim figure sauntered towards the evidence board, his eyes fixed on the red pins stuck into the map. He reached forward, his lithe fingers grasping at one, which pointed to an intersection of streets where the unsub dropped the first body. He stared at it for a while, plucked it out in a gentle manner and replaced it with a blue pin. This repeated twice more.

Spencer took a careful step back, grasping his hands together and playing with his fingers. His eyes scanned the board seemingly pixel by pixel of the printed out map. He loved to see Spencer put these puzzle pieces together.

Spencer got so lost in those moments. The best part to Derek was how shy and embarrassed Spencer got when he praised him. Spencer carefully explaining what he saw would lead to Derek patting him on the back and commenting, with as much platonic energy as he could muster without sounding cold,

„Good job pretty boy, I knew you could do it”.

Every time the nickname left his lips, it felt like it was carved in another tombstone in his mind cemetery. It was a promise of what could have been.

The flowers in the trees overlooking the graveyard bloomed the same pink as Spencer’s blushing face. He’d shoot Derek a short look before hiding, his neck bending as he turned away from Derek’s studious gaze.

Right now though, Derek remembered, behind Spencer’s lithe figure loomed Alvez. His large hand grasped Spencer’s shoulder as he grinned into him, Spencer replying with a smile that Derek thought was only reserved for him.

Morgan was a mature and serious man. And yet, Spencer had the uncanny ability to make him feel young and carefree, like a schoolboy with a crush. So if he mentally rolled out the measuring tape and compared the width of his shoulder or the size of his bicep to Alvez’s, that was only for him to know.

Before he had a chance to come up with a new gym plan, Spencer was turning around and searching him out in the bullpen. When their eyes met, it seemed like Spencer’s lit up as he energetically motioned for Morgan to get up and hear him explain the revelation he just made.  
Derek felt like moving towards Spencer required no energy. He was merely a planet, gravitating towards its brightest star.

The thought made him wonder, if when spoken aloud, Spencer would laugh and correct whatever inaccuracy Derek committed. He secretly hoped that he would blush that killer pink colour and tuck a stray curl behind his ear.

If Derek was a man of science, he would have set out to test his analysis, maybe would have done it twice more for accuracy’s and repeatability’s sake. However Derek always thought himself more of a man of feelings and emotions, so he kept this movie replaying in his mind.

As he stood next to Spencer, the man moving him through the motions of his drawn out explanations, Alvez seemed to fade into the background, removing his hand.

Derek would later take a second to examine whether he treated Alvez unfairly, wonder about the tombstones that lined his thoughts. Hindsight is always 20/20, so for now he focused on the possible skeletons in Alvez’s closet, hoping to discredit him at least in Spencer’s eyes.

He had no time to dwell on this, as Spencer’s explanation clicked in his brain, the plan of the unsub becoming clear. Next thing he knew he was calling over Prentiss who ran down the stairs from the office, her boots creating a staccato rhythm.

As he packed himself into the SUV and tightened the straps on his vest, he realised he had once more disrupted the plants growing in the earth he dug up so often. They withered and died. Derek had felt pity and almost related to their fate. He promised not to replant them anymore, for better or for worse.

**Author's Note:**

> hi <3  
> hope you enjoyed reading this!!  
> it is my first fic ever so please please leave kudos if you enjoyed it and comment any feedback you have.  
> you can find me on tumblr as sweetheartreid <3


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